How Obama can avoid the Carter trap

By Gideon Rachman

It is rarely a good sign when you begin to re-live your childhood. Of late, I have found myself drifting back to the 1970s with disturbing frequency. Once again, the British newspapers are full of headlines about Saudi oil sheikhs, inflation and trade-union militancy. A terrorist threat hangs over London. The England team has failed to qualify for a major football tournament. All it needs is some power cuts and the return of glam rock – and I will be right back into my second childhood.

But my most insistent flashbacks are to the US, not Britain. I spent the summer of 1976 in California, where I made the discovery that American politics is much more exciting than the British variety.

The US was in the throes of a presidential election and the Democratic party had produced a new and exciting candidate – Jimmy Carter. Like Barack Obama today, Mr Carter was inexperienced; but he promised a fresh start and an opportunity to change America’s image in the world.

There are close parallels between the elections of 1976 and 2008. The Iraq war, like the Vietnam war, has demoralised America and stoked the desire for change. But once again, there are fears that defeat might lead to a loss of American credibility or to a resurgence of isolationism.

The backlash against Vietnam (and the Watergate scandal) also created a worry that the US had betrayed its fundamental values. In the mid-1970s, the Church committee uncovered embarrassing tales of American involvement in assassinations and subversion overseas. Today congressional hearings about Guantánamo Bay and the use of torture are creating a similar sense that the US has lost its way.

In the 1970s, concerns about America’s global influence and moral standing were played out against a background of economic stagnation at home. There was a fear that a long period of prosperity was coming to a close. Then, as now, this was fertile ground for somebody promising a new style of leadership.

So is Mr Obama the new Jimmy Carter? One has to hope not. For all President Carter’s integrity and intelligence, he has gone down in history as a weak president. His period in office was marked by foreign policy disasters in Iran and Afghanistan. If Mr Obama is elected president next November, there will be ample opportunity for fresh disasters in both places.

There are three Carterite failings that Mr Obama will have to watch out for: panic, pessimism and naivety.

There is no doubt that America faced an energy crisis in the 1970s. But Mr Carter embraced an almost apocalyptic vision of the problem that now looks ridiculous. In 1977 he solemnly informed a national television audience that: “We could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”

President Carter’s pessimism did not just extend to hard facts about oil consumption. In his famous “malaise” speech of 1979, he mused that Americans have “growing doubts about the meanings of our own lives”. Speak for yourself Mr President, said the American people when in 1980 they elected the sunnily optimistic Ronald Reagan.

President Carter’s approach to diplomacy also contains lessons for Mr Obama – who has promised to hold unconditional talks with the leaders of countries such as Iran and Cuba. Mr Carter was also a great believer in face-to-face diplomacy. And sometimes it worked. His indefatigable energy helped to produce the Camp David peace settlement between Israel and Egypt.

But Mr Carter could also have a naive faith in the importance of personal contact. As Professor Lawrence Freedman puts it, he had a “tendency to confuse diplomacy with friendship”.

Mr Obama has clearly learned some of the lessons of the Carter era. His relentless emphasis on hope and optimism – “yes we can” – owes much more to Ronald Reagan than Jimmy Carter. The Obama camp knows that in presidential elections, the optimist usually beats the pessimist.

An optimistic campaign also makes it less likely that Mr Obama will fall into the second Carterite trap – panic. It is hard to be a panicky optimist.

But when it comes to foreign policy Mr Obama is in clear danger of being branded with the mark of Mr Carter. John McCain is already arguing that Mr Obama’s commitment to pull US troops out of Iraq within 16 months is both panicky and pessimistic. A commitment to troop withdrawals that was popular with Democratic voters when the war was going very badly, will come under tougher scrutiny in the general election. Mr Obama will have to fend off charges that he is prepared to throw away hard-won progress – without appearing to backtrack on troop withdrawals.

The Obama approach to diplomacy – with its emphasis on personal dealings between leaders – is also vulnerable to charges of Carter-style naivety. Mr Obama can certainly make the case that an attempt to talk to countries such as Iran and Cuba is long overdue, after President George W. Bush’s rigid and unproductive promise to shun “evil” regimes.

But the Democratic candidate may have to edge away from the promise of swift, top-level talks with American adversaries. Summits that put too much faith in the powerful personality of a new US president risk disappointment – or worse.

If Mr Obama can avoid a replay of the Carter years that would probably be a good thing. Personally, I recall the 1970s fondly. But that was before I had to pay a gas bill or worry about international politics.